JediMUD is a MUD, an online text-based role-playing game, one of the longest-running of its kind.[1] It has been open to the public since August 28, 1992[2] and is based on the CircleMUD derivative of the DikuMUD code-base.

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In its infancy, JediMUD was created by the Department of Psychology at Johns Hopkins University in an effort to study human behavior. On occasion, one of the original creators of the game would recruit people for more specific studies. Since then, JediMUD has been included in various technical, psychological, philosophical and historical whitepapers.[3][4]

Although in name JediMUD appears to be a MUD based on specific source material, it actually is not. JediMUD has a wide variety of areas to explore and classes to play grounded in a number of genres, most notably fantasy and sci-fi but also history and contemporary pop culture. The reasoning behind this is to allow players to focus on the areas which they like most and to allow them to develop their alternative personas as they see fit.

While text-based games like JediMUD lack the graphics of today's common MMORPGs, the trade-off is the ability to allow normal people to more easily contribute to the enjoyment of the game, through a team of administrators who take player-submitted ideas and use them to create the code, areas, mobiles and everything else required for the game to run.

Due to sharing of the same software developer, Jeremy Elson, JediMUD has often been tightly tied to the evolution of the popular MUD code-base, CircleMUD.[5][6]

JediMUD enjoys an international audience, including players from the US, UK, Germany, Norway, Austria, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, Japan, Costa Rica and many others. Some individuals have been playing JediMUD since its inception.

One former contributor to JediMUD created a YouTube video to illustrate the tight ties to history that several zones in the game have. Whereas some games focus on their own imaginary world, many JediMUD contributors have added zones based on historical figures and occurrences, such as the life of Emperor Honorius Augustus.[7]